Aircraft docking berth guidance refers to the process of bringing an arriving aircraft from the end of the taxiway to the parking position of the apron and accurately anchoring it. The aim of the berth guidance is to ensure the safe and accurate berthing of the docked aircraft, to facilitate the accurate docking of the airplane and various ground interfaces, and to make the boarding bridge to accurately abut to the aircraft door to improve the efficiency and safety of the airport.
An automated aircraft berth guidance system according to the use of different types of sensors is mainly divided into:
(1) a buried coil type; (2) a laser-scan ranging type; (3) a visual perception type.
Since the laser-scan ranging type and the visual perception type of automated aircraft guidance systems can effectively acquire visual information for docking an aircraft, the two types of automatic aircraft berth guidance systems may be also known as visualization berth guidance systems.
The buried induction coil type of automatic guidance system may determine the location of the docked aircraft by detecting whether there is a metal object passing through or staying at the buried induction coil. The buried induction coil has following advantages: fast response, low cost, no requirements on weather and illumination conditions. However, the buried induction coil suffers from large error, low anti-jamming capability. Moreover, leads and electronic components buried in the ground tend to be crushed, have low reliability, low measurement accuracy, and cannot identify a model type and cannot be easily debugged or maintained.
The laser-scan ranging type of automatic guidance system may determine information such as an aircraft position, speed and type model by laser ranging and laser scanning. The laser-scan ranging type of automatic guidance system does not tend to be influenced by environment illumination and weather condition. The laser-scan ranging type of automatic guidance system has a high accuracy and may be easily debugged or maintained.
The visual perception type of automatic guidance system may acquire image information of an aircraft docketing process by optical imaging, and determine information such as an aircraft position, speed and type model by intelligent information processing technology. The system has a simple architecture, a low cost and a high intelligent level, and may be easily debugged or maintained. However, it has requirements on the weather and illumination conditions, and thus has poor adaptability.
With the development of visual perception imaging technology, intelligent information processing technology and computer technology, visualization of aircraft berth guidance technology can accurately and quickly obtain docking information of docked aircraft, which has been applied in an airport berth guidance system.
Honeywell corporation in US has developed a visual docking guidance system (VDGS) and Siemens corporation in Germany has developed a video docking guidance system (VDOCKS), they have been applied as visual guidance devices of a worldwide leading level in some international airports.
However, the accuracy of aircraft acquisition, tracking and positioning, model type identification and identity verification in aircraft docking demands to be further improved.